Kazuya, Kazuhiko, and Nana: House of Horrors Part 5

Flashback - 12 Years Ago - Miyuki, Age 5

The overpowering whirs of machinery mask Miyuki's footsteps as he trots home from his very first day of elementary school.

He made some new friends and even taught a few of them how to play catch, and he can't wait to tell his parents all about it.

He slows down as he reaches the open garage, his father's back toward the entrance. Hunched over and concentrated on forging the perfect cut of steel, he's oblivious to his son calling his name.

Miyuki pouts, 'Dad's always busy,' he thinks, walking into the house, 'I guess I'll tell Mom first.'

After tossing his bag aside and washing his hands, he runs to his parent's room and busts the door open.

"MOM! Today was amazing! I...huh?"

Miyuki Nana shouts in surprise at her child's sudden appearance. The man underneath her looks up in confusion and she covers their naked bodies with a sheet as fast as she can, but it's too late.

"M-Mom," Miyuki says.

He doesn't understand the concept of sex yet, but he knows that that bed was where his mother and father slept at night, a sacred dwelling where no other man, woman, or whatever they pleased, can intrude.

He tracks Nana's movements underneath the sheet, probably frantically slipping into her undergarments.

"Mom," Miyuki says again, "what are you doing? Who is that man? That's not Dad."

Wearing a black lace bra and panties, Nana saunters over to Miyuki and kneels in front of him. She cups her hands on his cheeks and speaks in a low tone.

"Kazuya, my dear Kazuya. You surprised me. I wasn't expecting you at this time. What are you doing home so early? You came alone?"

"The teachers said it was going to rain hard, so they let us leave early. I sneaked home."

Miyuki eyes his mother's body.

The crevices of her body are outlined with sweat, her bosom is spotted with teeth marks, as well as her stomach and inner thighs. It's a startling sight for his innocent eyes.

"How caring of them, but please don't sneak home again," Nana says, bumping noses with her son, "It's dangerous. Well…I was hoping you wouldn't have to see this, but this is a change of events I can take advantage of."

"Whaddya mean? Who's that man?"

"Oh, Takeshi-kun? He's a man I met at my job. Quiet the stud, isn't he? I snuck him into the house."

"Dad will be angry. He should leave."

Nana laughs dryly as she uses one hand to ruffle Miyuki's hair and the other to massage his arm, "Daddy won't be angry if you don't tell him. Promise me you won't tell him. I know you won't, you're a smart child. Do this for mommy, okay? This will be our little secret, just between the two of us. Doesn't that sound cool?"

From that day onward, their secret blossomed into a grotesque tree with rotten fruit and sickly vines, reaching an extent that Miyuki never deemed imaginable.

Every day, or whenever Nana seduced another man and invited him over, she would force him to watch.

Yes, Miyuki would sit with his back against the locked door, ears tasked with listening out for Kazuhiko's footsteps and listening to his mother's moans. They were a sound he's accidentally heard before on a late-night trip to the bathroom, but hearing them up close from her kiss-swollen lips made him sick.

The way she yelled at him to look at her hips move up and down, to look at the mysterious men fondle and suck on her breasts, to make him say goodbye to them as they snuck out the window, made him sick.

He withheld his tears and screams out of what his mother might do if he expressed any sign of defiance. Coming home after school was a nightmare he wasn't allowed to wake up from, no matter how many times he was presented with the chance to tell his father, but the man was simply too occupied to be interested in his woes.

'Why is Mom doing this?' Miyuki asks himself, 'She's a good person…right?'

--

It's been thirty minutes since school was dismissed and he was the only child who hasn't been picked up yet. He looks down the road, hoping to see Nana running and apologizing for being late.

Or Kazuhiko.

He isn't sure who's supposed to be picking him up today.

"Kazuya-kun," says his teacher, Natsuki-sensei, as she crouches by his side, "Your parents still haven't arrived? School finished a while ago."

Miyuki shakes his head.

"That's not good. Parents shouldn't keep their children waiting. Say, wanna do something until they come? You can help me shelve the books and roll up the mats."

For the next hour or so, Miyuki and Natsuki-sensei tidy up the classroom, storing away the learning and playing materials that were used during the day. Miyuki even offered to help grade the math problems they worked on, which took Natsuki-sensei by surprise.

"What a smart child!" she praises, eyes twinkling, "Your parents must be proud to have such a bright little one."

"Nah," Miyuki says nonchalantly as he places a graded paper on the stack of others, "Mom's cheating on Dad."

Natsuki-sensei drops her pen.

Miyuki was clever and definitely capable of advanced thinking, but would he really conjure this troubling scenario just to kill time?

She looks at him and sees that his bottom lip is quivering.

"Kazuya-kun? Are you being serious? That's quite the claim and observation coming from someone your age. How do you know?"

"She makes me watch. When she and the men do it. She makes me watch and I can't tell Dad. If all girls are like her, I don't want a girlfriend. Never, ever, ever."

Holding a teary Miyuki in her arms, Natsuki-sensei vows to console him. She gives him a journal, and for the following weeks, tells him to jot down his feelings and thoughts about his life at home.

She doesn't expect much clarity and concrete detail from a five-year-old, but Miyuki's notes are collectively filled with pain and scarring memories that a child shouldn't have to experience.

"Mom saw the journal," Miyuki says one day. They are eating lunch together and he's packed his own, evident by the bandaged knife cuts on his fingers, "I think she might move me soon. To a new school."

Natsuki-sensei sighs, "I wish I could do more to help. I was planning on calling CPS because this is abuse, Kazuya-kun. It's abuse. But if your mother saw the notebook, she might pretend everything is fine and send them away. What should I do…"

Miyuki stuffs a mini hotdog into his mouth before speaking, "It's okay," he says, "You did your best, sensei. Kazuya-kun hurts, but…now it's my turn to do my best!"

Natsuki-sensei's heart breaks for him. It truly does. They spent many evenings after school waiting for his parents, cleaning, grading, talking, and laughing. She was Miyuki's only escape from his hellish household before he was dragged back there for the night.

He hid behind a perfect smile when interacting with his classmates, but it cracked around the edges when they were alone.

Her thoughts are interrupted by the sound of Miyuki closing his tin lunchbox.

"Can we play catch?" he asks rather energetically.

Natsuki-sensei nods her head, "That sounds lovely."

"I'm gonna miss Sensei."

"I'll miss you, too, Kazuya-kun."

"Why couldn't you be my mom instead?"

Miyuki is transferred to another school three days later.

--

"Ow!"

The knife clatters to the floor. Miyuki sucks on his finger, having nicked it while dicing carrots.

It was well into the night and Nana still hadn't returned from work, so Miyuki took it upon himself to start dinner. The rice was frying away in the pan and all that remained were the vegetables, but knife work proved to be too complicated for his stubby little fingers.

'I need to get better,' he thinks as he jumps down from the step he uses to reach the counter, 'If I can't use a knife, I won't eat well.'

After a few more attempts, Miyuki decides to save the carrots for another time and eats the fried rice on its own. He's halfway through his plate when his father walks into the kitchen.

"You made dinner?" Kazuhiko asks with a smile, "That's my son. Where's your mother?"

"Not here yet," Miyuki mumbles.

"I thought so." Kazuhiko lowers himself to his son's height and holds him by the arms, grip firm, and cemented, "Tell me, Kazuya. Have you seen your mother around the house with another man?"

"No!" is the first thing that flies out of Miyuki's mouth. He had to keep the secret, the only thing that promised to keep his and Nana's relationship afloat, the only thing that bonded them.

However, his father's face grew desperate with impatience. He shook his arms as if the answer would spill from them.

"I know you know something!" Kazuhiko sounds as desperate as he looks, "Come on, son. Tell me. You're a smart child so you must have caught on to something! Your mom's been acting strange, right? You've seen her with another man, right? It doesn't matter if it was only a glimpse!"

Miyuki cries in pain as Kazuhiko's grip is too harsh on his small figure. The thrashing about inadvertently sends his plate to the floor.

"Okay, okay!" he yells, "I'm n-not supposed to tell, but Mom's cheating! Let go now! You're hurting me!"

Satisfied with the confession, Kazuhiko stands up and walks away. It's more than enough and he's had more than enough.

The days that ensue find Miyuki curled up in the dark in his room, trembling and crying at the sounds of his parents arguing. He wants the shouting to stop, the cheating to stop, time to just stop, and rewind to before everything went terribly wrong.

He wants his family back, preferably on another outing to the beach where they can take a dip in the cool water and play catch in the sand.

Like the high tide coming in, the waves wash away those serene fantasies and leave his feet soaked in reality, more nightmarish than anything.

--

Months passed until it was just days before Miyuki's sixth birthday. Despite the tremendous upheaval of his once-peaceful home, he remained hopeful that his parents would set their issues aside and celebrate his birthday at the beach.

He had been thinking about it tirelessly during school, while he cooked, and even in his dreams while he slept.

However, that fantasy, too, was washed away by the highest tide of them all.

"Nana!" Kazuhiko shouts, "Where do you think you're going with that suitcase?!"

"I'm leaving this fucking house!" Nana retaliates.

Miyuki opens the door to his room and dashes into the kitchen.

Nana has a suitcase propped up next to her, fully packed with anything she could stuff inside. Sticking out of her coat pocket was a plane ticket.

"M-Mom," he says as he wraps her arms around her leg, "Where are you going? It's nighttime."

Nana doesn't spare Miyuki her look of contempt. She jerks her leg in an effort to shake him loose.

"Get off me, Kazuya," she says bitterly, "I'm leaving you and your stupid father. Wow, even saying your name makes me want to vomit. Kazuya. Kazuya, Kazuya, Kazuya. What a stupid name. Everything about this house is so stupid."

"Don't talk about my son like that!" Kazuhiko reaches around and grabs Miyuki, pulling him to safety, "I can't believe you're really doing this. How could you do this to me? I work so hard to put food on the table and this is how you repay me? By sleeping with other men? In front of my son, nonetheless?! You made him watch!"

"Me, me, me, everything is about you!" Nana claps between each word, "I've had it. You're selfish, Kazuhiko. Ever since we married, you became a workaholic. No, you were always a workaholic. That's what made me admire you at first, but then it spiraled out of control. We barely spent any time together. To be honest, I'm not even sure how we had Kazuya, we barely had sex."

"Is sex all that matters to you? During all these years of marriage, were you that dissatisfied because my priority was to prevent us from starving? We would be living more comfortably if you were more honest with your funds."

"Excuse me?"

"You spend your money on clothing and nights out with your friends! With those terrible financial habits, it would be impossible for me to stop working as much as I do. You have put zero effort into this marriage and you're complaining about sex? Save your breath, woman."

Nana scoffs as she flips a hand through her hair, "What a joke. I'm lucky to have found another man that is willing to satisfy my needs and there's nothing you can do to change my mind, so please get out of my way."

Kazuhiko seizes her by the wrist. She fights back, but he seizes both wrists, "Do you not feel even a shred of remorse? A shred of responsibility? Must I reiterate that you subjected Kazuya to involuntary voyeurism and made him keep it a secret from me?!

"How are you failing to understand how evil you have to be to do something like that? You could have chosen many different routes to express your dissatisfaction, yet you did it through our child!"

"I didn't expect Kazuya to walk in on me, and it wasn't premeditated in the slightest, but he's a smart child. I knew he'd be able to play an integral role in my agenda. I saw the chance and I took it, Kazuhiko. It's worked, hasn't it? The secret is out and I'm finally one step closer to leaving this shitty life behind me. In fact, I'm already at the door."

"What about Kazuya? Our child?!"

"Oh."

Nana leans to the side so she can see Miyuki hiding behind his father, clutching onto his pant leg. He isn't crying yet, tears locked and loaded on the brim of his lower eyelids. Were they tears of betrayal, perhaps tears of hurt and abandonment?

Nana desperately wants to bear witness to them.

"You mean the little brat that I never wanted to give birth to?" she asks. "It's a shame how long I tolerated this mother-child play. I'm in my late twenties; I shouldn't have wasted five years of my life raising a child. It should have nipped it in the bud. You can keep him, Kazuhiko. Ciao."

"Mom! Mommy!" Miyuki shrieks as Nana, after an intense struggle, rips free of Kazuhiko's hold and shoves past them.

Barefoot, he runs after her, relentlessly screaming her name into the chilly November air that shocks his lungs, but it was to no avail.

He arrives at the side of the road, stopping just before where traffic begins. Nana whistles for a taxi and one pulls up in seconds. After putting her suitcase inside the trunk, she gets in the taxi and it drives off.

Miyuki screams for her one last time before falling to his knees, scraping them. The concrete is cold and so are his tears as they finally spill, blurring his vision.

'Mom…'

SHATTER!

From inside the house, in a fit of rage, Kazuhiko has smashed the photo of his son and Nana at the beach to the floor, shards of glass scattering across the kitchen.

He feels embarrassed and foolish for thinking he was blessed to have married such a beautiful woman ten years his junior. He was unconcerned about the age gap for he thought Nana to be quite mature for her age, and she loved him unconditionally.

Or so he thought.

He overlooked the warning signs, blindly in love. Nana spent too many nights partying with her friends, often returning piss drunk and with zero dollars in her bank account. He believed it was normal, a phase that most twenty-year-olds went through before settling down to start a family.

But even after Miyuki was born, her behavior didn't cease. She took good care of him when she wanted to, showering him in affection and playing with him, but her motherly side would suddenly hit a kill switch.

And now she was off to lead a new life, leaving Kazuhiko to pick up the pieces, literally and figuratively, of what their family once used to be.

'Nana…'

--

Back to Now

"As you can see, Furuya," Miyuki says, placing the reassembled picture frame on the table, "your favorite upperclassman has been through the wringer. My dad ended up despising me, blaming me for my mother's walking out on us.

"Raising me meant less time they spent intimately and that caused the drift. Pathetic, don't you think? All because my mom couldn't get her fix our family fell apart. They're pathetic."

Kazuhiko walks over to the counter and curls his fingers around a butcher knife.

Furuya flinches.

"You're the one that is pathetic," Kazuhiko says. "Although, I must commend you on your memory. Nana is…was cunning. She knew how to manipulate. I will never forgive her for abusing you, but I can't forgive you, either. After she left, you hated women so strongly you turned gay, and despite your apathy towards her, you followed in her footsteps.

"You lied to and cheated on your partners and expected them to clean up after you because they, foolishly, still loved you. You will never be satisfied. You are pathetic, Kazuya. Hey, Furuya-kun."

Kazuhiko cocks his head to look at him, "You've been awfully silent. Have you realized that nothing good will result from being with my son? He will run away in the end, just like his mother. He resembles her from her appearance to her two-faced personality. You can't possibly fathom he'll be a good father and a present one at that. Might as well…take your child out of its misery."

The butcher knife gleams in the corner of their eyes, and Miyuki and Furuya's first instincts are to grab their bags and make a run for it. They don't look back to verify if Kazuhiko is chasing after them.

He was eccentric and worded his sentences weirdly, not insane. He might have pulled out the knife for dramatic effect or planned on bringing it to the garage, but the words "take your child out of its misery" didn't do those deductions justice at all.

Holding his stomach as if shielding his baby from harm's way, Furuya runs and runs until he reaches the bus stop where their journey began, Miyuki soon catching up. He sits down and catches his breath, wiping the sweat that has already accumulated on his forehead.

Miyuki looks at Furuya's arms. They're raided with goosebumps.

"This was a bad idea," he says, sitting next to him, "My dad has a screw loose, but I never thought he was going to…was he seriously about to hurt you?"

"We won't know and I am fine with that," Furuya responds, "I have a lot I want to say and questions I want to ask, but we need to get going."

"You just ran pretty far. You need to relax first."

"No. Hokkaido is about eight hours away by train, the Shinkansen Hayabusa, then a transfer to the Hokuto. We can relax during the ride."

Miyuki offers no rebuttal.

They take a taxi to Tokyo Station. Furuya goes to the ticket machine to buy their passes, but his mind goes blank as he looks at the dense menu. There are myriad options written in complicated kanji he can't read. Panicking, he blindly presses the section for the Hayabusa, makes seat reservations, and buys two of them.

"What's with that face?" Miyuki asks as Furuya walks over to him, "What did you do? Let me guess, you couldn't read the menu?"

Furuya gives Miyuki his pass and they head toward the gate, "I wanted Green Car passes, but I didn't know what to do after that—"

"FOUR HUNDRED DOLLARS?!" Miyuki's glasses slip off the bridge of his nose as he gawks at his pass, jaw damn near hitting the ground, "Why did you buy a seven-day pass, you idiot?! Does it look like we're going to be using these for seven days?!"

"Oh. Oh, no."

"Don't 'oh' me! Our passes combined, you just spent over eight hundred dollars! How are you not phased by this? Do you know how much baseball equipment eight hundred dollars can buy?"

"It's ok. My mom transfers money to my account each week. I never use it, so it adds up. Besides, you can't complain if we're going to be in the Green Car. It's fancy."

"Heh, I didn't know you were a rich boy. No flexing in front of your senpai from now on, got it?"

"The Shinkansen Hayabusa, starting from Tokyo and ending in Hakodate, will be approaching momentarily. Please have your tickets ready and stand clear of the platform edge."

"That's our train," Furuya says as the announcement ends. He goes to the gate and shows the staff his pass, then walks through.

Miyuki sighs in exasperation, "Eight hundred dollars…"